Course:WMST307:Student Pages:Amaury Bodin

Although it has different meanings in different fields of analysis, the word standardization firstly refers to bring to a standard or uniform size, strength, form of construction, proportion of ingredients, or the like [1] . In this way, it is similar to notions like uniformity, rationality or normality.

In economics, it refers to the efforts of companies to offer a common product, to use a common marketing approach, and to make their business activities the same or uniform throughout a particular market [2] . Therefore, standardizing is a marketing strategy to offer similar goods and services [3] for all the consumers, in spite of culture, legal environment, tastes, standards, and regulations of the market. Nowadays, standardization is linked with globalization, because of the general preference of the companies to create a universal representation of the products and the consistency among the offerings [4] and, therefore, a brand image throughout the world. Most of the McDonald’s, Coca-Cola’s, H&M’s, Universal’s or Levi’s products can be found with the same aspect in Seoul, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Amsterdam or Mumbai. This assertion implies a standardization of tastes and a convergence of choices within consumption.

Social criticism in the 60’s showed that economic standardization was normative. By creating norms, standardized production shapes consumption, and the personal perception of the consumers of what things ought to be. It means the process of establishing standards of various kinds and improving efficiency to handle people, their interactions, cases, and so forth [5] . This interpretation of the notion was linked at the time with modernization, large-scale social changes, bureaucratization, homogenization, and centralization of society [6]. According to this criticism, standardization is distinctly opposed to diversity.

Regarding culture, and according to the culture industry theorists, standardization is the phenomenon that explains blockbusters’ or pop stars’ audiences. According to Horkeimer or Adorno, the standard regulates and homogenizes. That’s how the culture industry is no more than the achievement of standardization and mass production, sacriﬁcing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of the work and that of the social system [7].

Language standardization is the construction, naturalization, and constant reproduction of a particular accent, vocabulary and way of communicating. For example, Standard English is the dialect found in dictionaries, spoken and written in the mainstream media, and taught in schools, compared to Black English, English spoken in Mississippi, or English spoken in the Canadian Maritimes. By associating Standard English with the educated, middle, and upper classes it becomes naturalized as the 'correct' form of the language, despite being socially constructed. Institutionalized oppression plays out in language since it is "the ordering of social groups in terms of who has authority to determine how language is best used."[8]

[1] “Standardization”, The Oxford English Dictionary. OED Online.
[2] Charles Wankel, in Encyclopedia of Business in Today's World, (Sage Publications, 2009).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Larry Sullivan, in The SAGE glossary of the social and behavioral sciences, (Sage Publications, 2009).
[5] William B.Stanley, Critical Issues in Social Studies Research for the 21st Century, (Research in Social Education, 2001).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, “The culture Industry : Enlightenment as mass deception”, in Dialectic of Enlightenment (Stanford University Press; 1 edition, 2007).

[8] Rosina Lippi-Green, English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States (Routledge, London and New York, 1997).